“The background noise of our mind”, a “peripheral vision” that focuses on empty space, on anonymous, inexpressive elements, caught “out of the corner of the eye”: this is Marina Ballo Charmet’s area of research. Her photos and videos focus on forms and objects of our everyday life, captured in their unexpected solitude. The exhibition ‘Fuori campo‘, organized by the Italian Institute of Culture in Madrid on the occasion of the Day of Contemporary Art, running from 18 October to 20 December, presents a selection of about sixty works produced by the artist from the 1990s to the present day.
Marina Ballo Charmet adopts an off-center, lateral, fluctuating, “bottom-up” view, capable of bringing closer together and prompting awareness of the rough and opaque material of architecture, the elements of the urban environment (flowerbeds, sidewalks, traffic islands, etc.), the vital tangle of plants, the dirt and dust that invade the environment, as well as close-ups, and almost unrecognizable details, of faces and bodies. The artist’s gaze is driven not by the reasoning mind but rather by chance and by the unconscious, which is open to immediacy, accepts errors and brings out the pauses, the intermittences, the leaps and bounds that weave the fabric of the experiences of our everyday life.
The exhibition, curated by Stefano Chiodi, provides an exhaustive overview of her production, starting with the series Con la coda dell’occhio (1993-94) and Primo campo, with color prints, arranged in diptychs and triptychs, which present close-ups of the human face. There is also a wide selection of works from the series Il Parco (2006-14), dedicated to public green spaces in Europe and in the United States.Three recent works conclude the exhibition: Giudecca, Le ore blu ( 2017), Centotrentuno minuti di cielo (2018-2019), two series consisting of videos and photographs, and the video L’alba (2015) in which Marina Ballo Charmet explores how time passes and how light changes.
Every year the Farnesina and Amaci dedicate the Day of Contemporary Art to contemporary art work and to its public.